


the lights will arise

by nothingunrealistic



Series: this human heart (built with this human flaw) [2]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Friendship, GAY/LESBIAN SOLIDARITY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-04 14:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12170937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingunrealistic/pseuds/nothingunrealistic
Summary: Alana and Jared aren't friends, really, but that doesn't mean they're total strangers.





	1. i won't mind

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from "Djohariah" by Sufjan Stevens. All chapter titles from "Good For You."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set after chapter 2 of "(and i don't know) how i would even start," between acts 1 and 2 of the show.

“Can I have your number?”

Jared drops his fork. It lands in his mashed potatoes. “What?”

“As co-president of The Connor Project, I figure I should be able to contact you as the treasurer outside of school hours,” Alana says, wondering at his reaction. “But I don’t have any of your contact information, and obviously we can’t use Evan as an intermediary all the time. Wouldn’t be very professional.”

_“Oh._ Yeah, sure.” Alana hands her phone to him, already open to a new contact page. “Word of advice, maybe lead with the Connor Project thing next time, because just asking ‘can I have your number’ with no context does not sound professional. It’s basically the opposite.”

Too late, Alana realizes what he means, how her initial question must have come across. “Oh my God, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that in the slightest, I would never ask you that. No offense!” she quickly adds. “You just… aren’t my type, at all, even if we weren’t colleagues.”

“None taken, trust me,” Jared says, tapping the screen a few more times and handing back her phone. “You definitely aren’t mine either, and I didn’t want it to get weird.”

Alana thinks she ought to take offense at that — most girls probably would — but honestly she’s just relieved. “Well, I’m glad we straightened that out.” Jared snorts at that but doesn’t say anything. “Oh, by the way, did you ever get more of those buttons made? I think they could be really useful.”

“Useful how?” Now that Jared’s hands are free, he’s picked up his fork and started cleaning it off with a napkin. “I doubt anyone here’s going to buy a second button. The market’s pretty much saturated.”

“But a button that actually mentions The Connor Project by name would be a completely different product. People would be interested, I’m sure.” Even though she’s already bought a button, and gotten a free one as co-president, Alana would be perfectly ready to buy one that supported the Project. “It would be a great way to raise awareness and money at the same time. Goodness knows we need more of both.”

“How much more aware of us could people possibly get? I’m pretty sure if you Googled ‘internet famous,’ the first page would just be pictures of Evan’s face.”

He has a point. “Even if people do know about us, that doesn’t mean they’re contributing to us yet. We need a plan for improving our finances if we’re ever going to build something with real-world impact. Massive fundraising drive, remember?”

Jared grimaces unexpectedly at being reminded of his own idea. “Unfortunately, it turns out Michaels won’t actually let me print new text on old buttons, and I don’t have the budget for five hundred new buttons. So I can’t help you there, unless you’d like to buy me a gift card. Or donate to my GoFundMe.”

Alana swears she hears the cacophony of a thousand light bulbs flickering to life at once. “That’s it!” she cries, and Jared, startled, drops his fork again and presses one hand to his temple when it falls to the floor. “That’s exactly what we need to do, I can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner…”

“What is it that we’re thinking of?”

“Crowdfunding!” Though she’s been leaning on the table since she arrived, Alana’s standing up fully now, too excited by this flash of insight to stay still. “Like you said, the entire world knows who we are. Our online community is our biggest asset. Why not go directly to them to raise the funds we need?”

There’s a skeptical tilt to Jared’s head when he looks up from where his fork has landed under the table. “Because thousands of strangers aren’t going to give us money for nothing?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be for _nothing._ It’s for an important cause, and if people didn’t believe in that cause, they wouldn’t be following us in the first place.” A beeping noise cuts through the middle of the conversation, and Alana glances at her watch, which she’d set an alarm on earlier, and remembers that oh yes, she has a class to get to, since this isn’t actually her lunch period. “I have to go, but I’ll definitely let Evan know about this. I really think it could work.”

“Make sure that he knows I helped give you the idea, will you?” Jared’s voice softens slightly when he asks. “Wouldn’t want anyone thinking I’m not contributing anything to the Project.”

Why anyone would think that Alana doesn’t know — he’s the treasurer, he’s bound to have a major role to play in their fundraising soon enough — but it probably doesn’t matter. “I’ll make sure to explain how it came up. Bye!”

As she’s walking away, she glances at the newly added contact for the first time and sees that Jared’s put a rainbow emoji after his name in her phone. _You definitely aren’t mine either,_ she remembers, and giggles slightly.

Maybe, Alana thinks — she hopes — he’ll put one after her name as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can take away gay Jared Kleinman and lesbian Alana Beck when you pry them from my cold, dead, gay hands.


	2. the bolts all crack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set after "if you only say the word."
> 
> Content warning for discussions of death and suicide.

Evan hasn’t been at school for the past three days.

The last day he came to school was Friday. Since their last conversation, on that same Friday, Alana has missed two calls from Evan. She has also sent him five texts and two Facebook messages, all of which he has read and none of which he has responded to, and has tried to call him three times via Skype, all unsuccessfully. It’s Wednesday now. Evan generally responds to all messages within an hour and a half, excluding those sent late at night, and it’s highly unusual for him to miss multiple consecutive days of school.

Alana knows all these things, because knowing things is what she does. Sometimes she thinks of knowing things as her job, except no one’s paying her, and she didn’t volunteer at any point that she can remember. But she doesn’t know why Evan hasn’t been coming to school, which makes the rest of her knowledge frustratingly useless.

Until she remembers something else — or rather, someone else — that she knows. Someone who might have knowledge that she doesn’t have.

So Alana finds herself, for the second time, wandering through the school cafeteria, lunch bag in hand, scanning the rows of tables, until she spots Jared. He’s sitting by himself at one of the tables on the perimeter of the cafeteria — phone in one hand, plastic spoon in the other, a full Styrofoam tray of food in front of him — and staring ahead at the cinderblock wall. She waves to try to get his attention, but he doesn’t notice her until she sits down directly across from him.

“I already told you I’m not interested in being a co-president,” he says, voice flat, before Alana can get a word out. “Treasurer is more than enough for me, thanks.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Alana says, although she had considered asking him again, if not right now. “I thought you might know where Evan’s been for the past few days, or why he hasn’t been at school. I asked him, but he won’t respond to my messages.”

“Why do you always ask me about what he’s doing?” Jared puts his phone down, the screen black, to adjust his glasses. Have the circles under his eyes always been that dark? “I’m not his keeper.”

“Of course not, but you’re his friend in addition to being part of The Connor Project, which I’m not really, so I thought you might know —”

“Well, I don’t. I have no idea where he is. He could be lying dead in a ditch by the side of the road for all I know.”

Alana winces at that image. How Jared can say that in a dull monotone with hardly any expression is something she doesn’t understand. “Assuming he’s not… in that situation, I really do need to talk to him about The Connor Project, and what we’re going to do now.”

For the first time since she sat down, Jared actually looks at her. “What do you mean, ‘what we’re going to do now?’” His leg is bouncing under the table, like a racing heartbeat made tangible.

“Well, now that the Kickstarter’s over and we exceeded our goal, we need to get started on building the orchard. I made some revisions to the budget and timetable to account for the additional funds, and I figured I should at least run them by Evan before implementing them, since he is still co-president. And you too, I suppose, as the treasurer.” Alana may be the associate treasurer, but that wouldn’t justify completely cutting Jared out of The Connor Project’s financial decisions.

“Oh, you remembered.” Jared’s voice, still flat, now has a definite edge to it. “So we’re still going ahead with that?”

That’s a strange question. “Why wouldn’t we? We have all the money we need. Not building the orchard would be a huge disappointment to the community.” After all the time and effort Alana has spent fundraising and making connections, seeing people connect with one another, there’s no way she’d be willing to let them down now.

Instead of responding immediately, Jared pokes at his school-issued pile of macaroni and cheese for a few moments. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but right now, what the ‘community’ wants is the Murphys’ blood. Is that in your budget?”

“That’s not —”

“It is. Have you seen the comments people have been leaving?” As the admin and comment moderator of all Connor Project social media, Alana has in fact seen all the comments people have left, but Jared starts reciting a clearly memorized list anyway. “‘He knew his family didn’t give a shit.’ ‘Maybe they should have spent their money on helping their son.’ ‘Fuck the Murphys.’”

“I know what they’re saying.”

“They got doxxed, Alana. Someone posted their address. Because you thought it was a good idea to show the entire world his _note —_ ”

“I know!”

Alana realizes that, at some point, she’s closed her eyes and braced her head in her hands, trying to block out Jared’s words.

She knows everything everyone’s been saying. She’s seen the hatred and the anger that have been taking over the community despite her best attempts at moderation, that was probably there all along, just under the surface.

God, she wishes she didn’t know.

Gradually, she forces herself to open her eyes and look up at Jared, spoon still in his hand, shaking slightly. “I’ve seen all of it,” she says finally. “That’s exactly why we need to continue with building the orchard. Otherwise everything bad that’s happened, all the negative reactions — it’ll have been for nothing. The Murphys and the community, the real community, deserve the orchard to justify what they’ve gone through.” To justify what she’s gone through, too.

Jared’s returned to the mac and cheese, more aggressively, practically stabbing it now. “And what about Evan?”

“…What about him?” Evan hasn’t been the best co-president, it’s true. And she can’t say she’s not still displeased with him for practically abandoning the Kickstarter for over two weeks. For getting publicly involved with Zoe. (There’d been no shortage of angry comments about that, both online and off.) For questioning her commitment to The Connor Project. For leaving her hanging until last Friday.

But Evan had come back. He’d apologized. And when she’d questioned his commitment right back, he’d given her the proof she needed, the final push they needed to meet their Kickstarter goal. “He deserves the orchard too. He’s already contributed a lot to The Connor Project. More than you have.”

Jared laughs, short and harsh. Alana hasn’t heard him laugh very often, but she doesn’t think it normally sounds like that. “This isn’t about what Evan deserves. And it’s definitely not about me.” Given that his leg is now bouncing fast enough to make the table vibrate, she’s inclined to believe that this is, somehow, about Jared, in a way she can’t see.

After twenty seconds of silence, it’s clear Jared won’t continue that thought unprompted. “So what is it about?”

“You’re the valedictorian,” and Jared’s words are all edges now. “You’re supposed to be smart. Can’t you figure it out?”

A small, mean part of Alana’s mind whispers _no wonder he was sitting alone before you came over._ A different, meaner part responds _and how many times have you sat alone at a cafeteria table?_ (It’s too many.) She does her best to ignore both of them. “I’m not a mind reader, Jared. Just tell me what you’re thinking instead of making this more difficult.”

“It shouldn’t be difficult to see that Evan cutting school for three days in a row after you showed that letter to the entire world means he’s not interested in using the money you made from it to build an orchard!”

“Evan _gave_ me Connor’s note,” Alana protests. Why is Jared acting as if she stole it from him? “He said he wanted to recommit to The Connor Project, he knew the emails were already online, he knew I needed to raise the rest of the money, I don’t know why he was so upset —”

“How would you feel?” Jared hisses, monotone veneer gone, eyes oddly bright behind his glasses. “If you were Evan. If your best friend in the world wrote a letter about how there’s no hope for the future and he wishes everything was different and no one would notice if he disappeared. And then he does disappear, for three days, and the next thing you hear about him is that he’s dead. That he killed himself.” He pauses to draw in a breath, deep and shaky. “And you’d like to cry your eyes out over him in peace, but you can’t, because someone decided to put his letter on the internet, for a fundraising drive, and now thousands of assholes are tripping over themselves to decide whose fault it was. How would you feel about that?”

Several moments of near-silence, filled only by the ambient noises of the cafeteria and the tired, pained sounds of Jared’s breathing, follow his question. Alana doesn’t have an answer, can only stare at him as he shudders and then abruptly, deliberately stops.

“Because I — if I were Evan,” Jared says at last, “I wouldn’t want to show up to school either. I would want to leave and not come back.” He stares down at the table, at his nearly untouched tray, with his arms crossed. “You wanted to know why he hasn't been here, right? Now you do.”

Alana does know, now. She knows too much.

With a pang, she remembers how Evan had asked her not to let anyone else see Connor's note, and how she’d told him that everyone needed to see it. How he’d insisted it wasn’t the right way to fulfill Connor's dream. How he’d tried to call her twice that weekend, despite once admitting to her that he hated phone conversations and found Skype calls only marginally better, and she hadn't picked up, too preoccupied with first responding to and then simply deleting all the vitriolic comments overtaking The Connor Project's social media pages.

She’d shut him out, like he had her, until it was too late.

How could she have believed that Evan hadn’t really known or cared about Connor? That he didn’t still care?

And, she adds internally, looking across the table and seeing that Jared’s hands have shifted so that his arms aren’t crossed anymore but are wrapped tightly around him, like he’s trying to hold the pieces of himself together, how could anyone believe that Jared doesn’t care about Evan? Especially Jared himself?

“You’re worried about him,” she says, softly, and Jared jumps a little, whatever train of thought he was on apparently derailed by her voice. “Aren’t you?”

“It’s like I said.” The words are quiet, uneven. “He could be lying dead somewhere and I wouldn’t even know.”

Stunned, Alana can only watch as Jared suddenly stands, roughly adjusting his glasses again with an unsteady hand, and walks away, taking his tray with him to dump it in the trash. She doesn’t think he’s eaten anything during their conversation, or during the whole lunch period, and she realizes that she hasn’t either.

What is she supposed to do in this kind of situation?

Assure Jared that Evan’s just fine, that they’ll surely hear from him soon, that he’s not dead? (She doesn’t know any of those things for sure.) Say that even if Evan isn’t fine, they both will be? (That’s obviously not true, and probably not helpful either.) Give him a hug? (Alana doesn’t give hugs very often, and Jared might be one of those people who hates being hugged by people he doesn’t know well, or by anyone at all.)

(Or he might be one of those people who absolutely falls apart if you hug them when they’re upset, and Alana wouldn’t know how to deal with that, and she wouldn’t want to make him deal with that either. Especially not in the middle of a crowded cafeteria.)

Jared’s coming back now, and instead of sitting down he grabs his backpack and heads for the door, and she can’t just do nothing, so she gets up and steps into his path, putting a hand on his shoulder. His expressions are hard for her to read sometimes, but right now, as he looks at her, he’s clearly confused and surprised, like he didn’t expect anyone to see him leaving.

“Look,” Alana begins, not sure where this sentence is going to go. “I can’t just promise that all of this is going to turn out okay. It might not, I don’t know everything —”

“You _don’t?”_ Jared interrupts, but there’s no sharpness to it.

“— but the point is,” and she actually has a point now, “if… if things turn out to not be fine, you can talk to me. You can call me, or text me, or just meet me here at school, I suppose. But you don’t have to be worried all by yourself.”

It’s strange to say these things to another person, face to face, rather than in a Twitter thread, or a blog post, or even a video. To say them and know that someone’s listening at exactly that moment. But it’s what Alana would want to hear, if she were in Jared’s position.

And he’s not walking away or laughing at her, so maybe it’s what he wants to hear too.

“…oh,” he says, still confused and surprised but also… hopeful? Grateful? “That’s cool. And, uh, same to you. If you want.”

“That would be great,” Alana says, and she realizes she's smiling for the first time in days.

Jared doesn’t smile back, but his eyes aren’t quite so shiny anymore, and he nods at her before turning and walking through the cafeteria’s double doors. The bell rings to signal the end of lunch, and the crowd of students getting up and rushing to class sweeps Alana out those same doors and into the hallway.

Her phone buzzes in her jacket pocket. Still making her way down the hall, Alana pulls it out and checks the screen. It’s a text. From Jared, who’s vanished among the masses of people. It’s only one word long.

_thanks_


	3. go ahead now

On Friday, Evan comes back to school.

He’s quiet, not speaking up in class or greeting people in the halls. That’s not so unusual for him, but what is different is that all the students who used to talk to him at lunch or wave to him first in the hall have stopped, completely. It would seem they’ve moved on, too. 

Seeing him, Alana is almost reminded of the first day of school, disregarding the fact that his cast has been gone for quite a while. But the passage of time shows when she goes to talk to him, now a week after their last conversation in person. Evan smiles and says he’s just fine when she asks if he’s been alright, and he nods understandingly when she says it was wrong of her to publish Connor’s note without his permission even if it was for a good cause, and he agrees without a single stutter that work on the orchard should begin according to Alana’s revised plans, and he’s able to look her right in the eye when he says that he’s discussed some things with the Murphys and decided that it’s for the best if he steps down from The Connor Project, and would she mind taking over as the sole president?

Of course, Alana says she can easily do that, she did before and it wasn’t so hard, and puts on the brightest smile she can manage when she says it. 

As soon as that conversation is over, she goes straight to Jared (he would say that’s impossible) and asks him one last time if he would maybe, possibly consider taking on the position of co-president now that Evan’s resigned.

“Well, I’m very flattered that you keep asking,” Jared says. Though he speaks more breezily than he did two days ago, he’s also fiddling continuously with the adjustable strap on his backpack. Alana would swear she’s seen Evan do exactly that before. “But I was about to tell you I’m resigning as treasurer. So thanks, but no thanks.”

He keeps looking away from her while he’s talking, over her shoulder. She doesn’t understand why until she hears a muffled  _ thump  _ from behind her and turns around to see Evan in front of his locker at the end of the hall, picking up a textbook from the floor.  _ Oh. _

“Did you have someone in mind to replace you?” Like she doesn’t already know how he’ll answer that.

“You’re already the associate treasurer. I thought you would just drop the ‘associate’ part.”

She’s right. Again. “I may be capable of running The Connor Project by myself, but I don’t appreciate you two not giving me a choice.” 

“And I didn’t appreciate you two running the Kickstarter without me. Sounds like Evan is the common factor here.” Alana glances over her shoulder to see if Evan’s heard that, but that end of the hallway is now empty.

“I’ve had enough of working alone,” and the words catch in her throat, because Alana strives to only say things that are true and this particular thing is painfully so. “I’m tired of it.”

Jared frowns. “You’re not alone, you know. Maybe you are if you’re only looking at the Connor Project’s executive board, but the world’s bigger than that.”

“Internet followers don’t count.”

“Don’t I?” He rocks on his heels as he says it. “I mean, we’re… acquaintances. Allies. Comrades. Whatever terminology floats your boat.”

Alana looks at him, hands shoved in his pockets, waiting expectantly for a response, and sees something she recognizes. Something she understands.

If she were in his position, what kind of answer would she want?

The truth, of course. 

“I don’t think so,” she says, and then to avoid giving him time to be disappointed quickly continues, “No, I’d just say we’re friends.”

Alana doesn’t know everything, despite how much she wishes she did sometimes, or how often people expect her to. But if she knows anything, it's that the way the corners of Jared's mouth lift just a little, and the fact that despite the morning’s frustrations she finds herself smiling back, mean she’s finally said something that they both wanted to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full circle. (No thanks to Steven Levenson.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Feel free to leave kudos and comments, or to yell at me on Tumblr @nothingunrealistic.


End file.
